Chapter Six—
Party, State, and Civil Society, 1985-1990

The late 1980s saw both the consolidation of the changes taking place in Kenya's single-party system and the rise of new forms of resistance that slowed, but did not stop, the processes set in motion earlier. The merger between party and state in 1985 was more permanent than it appeared at the time. KANU declared itself constitutionally superior to Parliament and used its disciplinary powers to bar individuals who criticized policy from electoral politics.^[1] Increasingly it absorbed other, formerly separate representative bodies and began to acquire a corporatist character similar to that of Zaire's Mouvement populaire de la révolution (MPR), although not nearly on the same scale. For all that it succeeded in extending its control over the political expression of economic interests among the matajiri, urban groups, and the petite bourgeoisie, at the grass roots in the rural areas, KANU remained weakly organized as a structure of representation, mobilization, and even, in many cases, control. As one farmer told the lawyer Kiraitu Murungi, "only hyenas could prevent him from travelling and in that case, only at night."^[2]

As a result of new disciplinary structures within the party, it became difficult to resist further encroachment on political space from within Parliament or the party, and the defense of speech and association became increasingly extra-parliamentary. To the degree that this new pattern of opposition proved effective in limiting some kinds of political restrictions, it succeeded because first law associations, then church groups used their partly protected positions and their international con-

tacts to voice criticisms and influence bilateral aid decisions. Elites have not had sufficient economic power to use boycotts or sectorwide strikes successfully as protection against further encroachment on civil liberties, although two members of the matajiri class, Kenneth Stanley Matiba and Charles Rubia, did mount a campaign for multi-party democracy. Only in the last half of 1990 did segments of Kenya's large informal sector, long considered part of Moi's "populist" base, begin to participate in opposition activities and use the sector's economic position to advantage. By and large, the activities of such elements during the period under study remained diffuse and undirected.

As KANU became more and more a creature of the Office of the President, personal rule began to replace management of demands through institutional mechanisms. The monument built to commemorate the first nyayo decade symbolized this change; it depicted Moi's arm clutching the staff of office and reaching out from Mt. Kenya. So did the 1989 creation of "Moi Day," a new holiday on October 10 of every year. Certainly, the identification of policy with the president did not reach the proportions it did in Zaire or in many other sub-Saharan countries. The provincial administration still handled many functions in accordance with impersonal procedures and criteria. Particularly in Nairobi, however, bureaucrats became increasingly anxious about potential disapproval of their activities by the Office of the President and hesitant to make controversial decisions on their own. The Office of the President became the reference point, slowing the process of institutional development not only in the legislature but also in the bureaucracy itself.

Kenyans and outsiders alike noted the change. At the time of the Njonjo affair (see p. 147 above), the Weekly Review had noted that a powerful leader was not a personal ruler but someone who created structures and processes that would help the public manage conflicts of interest over the long term:

Behind them [the great leaders of the past] these men left nations made up of individuals, but also nations made up of institutions, and in the long run the history of nations is a history of institutions rather than of individuals, and the strength of a nation lies in the strength of its institutions rather than in that of its leading personalities. Indeed, to the extent that powerful individuals stand in the way of the growth of institutions, they contribute to the weakness rather than the strength of their nations.^[3]

Outside observers and consultants noted the consequences of the increasing personalization of power. For example, David Leonard remarked that under the prevailing conditions, "permanent secretaries

and their equivalents almost never try to build support for the policies they favor with legislators, party personnel, interest groups. . . . Instead, they resolve problems through the use of personal relationships."^[4] A study by Joel Barkan suggests that members of Parliament are also reluctant to establish interest-group ties or to represent the interests of groups in the legislature. In a study of members of Parliament in the early 1980s, Barkan found that although a third of Kenyan MPs said speaking in Parliament was their most frequent activity, a higher proportion than the research team found in Korea or Turkey, no Kenyan legislators said they had authored or sponsored bills, worked for a bill in a committee, or offered an amendment. Most significant, only 3.6 percent said they had sought support outside the Assembly, and only 7 percent said they had privately tried to persuade a colleague to vote for or against a measure.^[5]

This chapter is not intended to provide an exhaustive account of the 1985–90 period. Its purpose is to demonstrate, first, that the "party-state" was more than a fleeting visitor in Kenya's political history; second, that this system of rule had predictable consequences for forms of political participation; and, third, that although with construction of clever alliances it was possible for disaffected members of the Kenyan community to secure repeal of some measures that threatened their political space, it was difficult to effect significant changes of attitude and strategy in the State House. As the Office of the President used the party as an instrument for securing public order, a means of social and political control, it became increasingly difficult for patronage networks and new associations to operate. Increasingly, those whose interests were threatened by the activities of the government sought bargaining power in alliances with elements of the international community. Others took their opposition underground or participated, quixotically, in street demonstrations and ephemeral displays of disagreement.

The Consolidation of Changes in Party-State Relations

The fusion of the party and the Office of the President that started in the mid 1980s continued through the next five years. During this period, the government took several steps to increase the discretion of the president in political affairs. The changes in the relationship between KANU and the State House were but one of these. First, the Office of the President won parliamentary passage of constitutional amendments in 1986

and 1988 that eliminated security of tenure in office for the attorney general, the controller, auditor, and, later, judges of the High Court and Court of Appeal, removing the few remaining judicial checks on the power of the chief executive. These steps met with limited opposition in Parliament but significant objection from the country's legal community, many of whose members argued that the changes would completely undermine the rule of law. Coupled with the absence of a jury system in the country, these changes made judicial processes highly vulnerable to government influence.

Although the effects are still not entirely clear, the government also re-drew the country's political boundaries, creating thirty new constituencies and increasing the number of members of Parliament to 188 elected representatives, 12 nominated members, and two ex officio members.^[6] For the most part, the new electoral districts created corresponded to areas that had experienced the greatest population growth. After the changes, the district of Kakamega in Western Province emerged with the greatest number of constituencies, followed by the Kisii and Machakos districts. Many of the changes clearly had political overtones, however. The old Nyeri constituency yielded three new constituencies, whose boundaries split Waweru Kanja's following and forced Kanja to choose where he stood the best chance of sustaining his political career. Butere, the old constituency of the perennial gadfly Martin Shikuku, was divided in half and between provinces, in a move that angered residents and led to protests from the chairman of the local Lwanda-Ooho-Muhaka Progressive Society, who said, "The decision is obviously intended to please a certain politician and not for the benefit of the people."^[7]

Third, Moi moved to replace incumbents in key security and governmental "gate-keeping" positions with men of his own choosing and own community. Kalenjin were appointed to the positions of speaker of the National Assembly, head of the Civil Service and cabinet secretary, deputy army commander, deputy air force commander, commandant of the Staff College, chief military intelligence officer, principal staff officer at Army Headquarters, director of the Criminal Investigation Department, commandant of the Government Services Unit, deputy director of intelligence, deputy police commissioner, and presidential escort commander and aide-de-camp to the president, among other posts, including key economic positions.^[8]

Fourth, although the State House had temporarily closed some foreign press offices, such as that of the Associated Press, for publishing

food-need statistics ostensibly critical of the government, in 1984, the real crackdown on journalists began in 1986. The government arrested and detained several journalists, including Joseph Makoka of the Nation . It confiscated editions of foreign and domestic publications containing human rights stories, including Africa Confidential, New African , the International Herald Tribune , the Economist , and Beyond . It arrested several foreign reporters and announced that it would review the work permits of more than one hundred domestic and foreign correspondents.^[9] The Nation newspaper, owned by the Aga Khan, temporarily lost the ability to cover Parliament when the deputy speaker, Kalonzo Musyoka, who was also national organizing secretary of KANU, charged that the Nation had "scandalized the reputation of members." Musyoka said that the newspaper had tried to divide Kenyans by saying that MPs had failed to engage in lively debate of the budget and by commenting that Kenyans experienced lower standards of living now than they had at independence. He argued that the company had dismissed journalists and administrators who wanted to be loyal and active KANU members. This behavior he attributed to a program that permitted an exchange of journalists between the Nation and the Times of St. Petersburg, Florida, where, he alleged, journalists were trained to subvert their nation.^[10] Musyoka's charges were partly political and partly personal, it turned out. The employee dismissed from the Nation staff was a relative, who had been asked to leave for reasons having to do with job performance. The newspaper lost access to Parliament for four months. Increasingly the government sought to ban discussion of certain topics as well, most notably voting procedures.

Kanu as an Element of Political Strategy

A fifth dimension of presidential strategy for controlling conflict was to further modify the operation of KANU. Although the leadership did little to improve organization at the local level or to strengthen the party's policy-making capabilities, it did take steps to expand control over the behavior of the membership. The party took new steps to enforce loyalty to the president among its members. A new national disciplinary committee with broad discretion was formed in the early months of 1986. Its powers included the ability to expel party members or otherwise impose sanctions against those who, in its view, committed "any act which in the opinion of Kanu is not in its interest" or in any way

undermined the party president, the head of state, or the KANU government.^[11]

Even members of the government and some KANU stalwarts found this mandate, and its use to manipulate the electoral fortunes of parliamentary candidates, unacceptable. In 1987, Peter Okondo, then minister for labor, raised questions in Parliament about the national disciplinary committee's conduct. Okondo was thereupon hauled before the committee for censure, and quiet outrage grew at the handling of disciplinary proceedings and the violation of the laws guaranteeing protection of views expressed in Parliament.

Elijah Mwangale, a longtime Moi supporter, reassured foreign reporters that Okondo, and anyone else brought before the disciplinary committee, could have refused to respond to the summons, and Moi finally dissolved the committee when it reprimanded Mwangale himself for this statement. It had operated for scarcely more than a year.

Although the organization chart changed after the dissolution of the national disciplinary committee, the party's behavior did not. Presumably with the blessing of the president, KANU branches assumed many of the functions the committee had performed. Disciplinary action by branches expelled a number of senior politicians from the party between 1987 and the end of 1989. These included the former vice president Josephat Karanja, who was installed as Mwai Kibaki's successor, then demoted. Karanja's accusers said that the vice president had sought to murder prominent Kikuyu through staged road accidents, had established ties with malcontents in Uganda, and had ordered KANU members to kneel before him. He never had a chance to respond to the charges. Others expelled included the lawyer Kimani wa Nyoike and two members of Parliament, Kenneth Matiba and Charles Rubia, who were both later detained. Rubia was dismissed in a June 1989 party purge that removed fourteen other politicians. Moi threatened still more expulsions, saying, "The jigger has been removed but many little eggs remain in the would and they must be killed."^[12]

Eventually, panic in the ranks over the power of local branches to expel members and pressure from foreign donors led to temporary suspension of that function under orders from the president. For the decade of the 1980s, however, most politicians lived in fear of losing their positions through a party purge. Indeed, the eventual decision to stop expulsions and replace them with suspensions made little difference. An individual whom the party leadership suspended was barred from participation in future general elections.

Even without the formal instantiation of the disciplinary committee, KANU abrogated parliamentary immunity with increasing frequency. Earlier, members could rest assured that words uttered in Parliament would not open them to prosecution. Without this immunity, argued the framers of the constitution, MPs would not be willing to criticize the activities of ministries, and there would be little meaningful debate. Beginning in 1988, KANU violated this immunity on several occasions, however. For example, one MP voiced concern about the number of murders in his constituency and urged a review of security there. The president criticized the MP, saying that he should not have taken such an issue before the legislature. The MP's local KANU branch suspended him, and a higher party committee upheld the verdict and the penalty. No faction within Parliament was sufficiently stable to mount a successful challenge to the party management on its own.

The party experimented with other ways of controlling competition within its ranks and of ensuring that candidates for elective office would bear the president's stamp of approval. In 1987, KANU sought to implement a system of preliminary elections in which party members selected the three top candidates from among those interested in seeking a parliamentary career; in the event that one candidate secured 70 percent of the vote, that candidate would advance to the general election unopposed. This provision was designed to reduce fragmentation in constituencies and ensure that the candidate eventually elected carried a significant proportion of the votes cast. It limited opportunities for party members critical of existing policies to gain a hearing, however.

The mere ability of KANU branch members to intervene in the licensing and publicity of meetings had significant effects too. The KANU power structure disapproved of Martin Shikuku, often a defender of political space, although a man of unpredictable stances. Shikuku had been part of the investigative committee that looked into J. M. Kariuki's assassination and had faced sanctions for his role. He was tremendously popular in his constituency, Butere, in Kakamega District. In 1988, however, he lost his seat to a virtual unknown. Later, when he won election to the KANU district branch, his election was nullified, and he was sidelined.

Further, beginning in November 1988, the president and KANU mounted a series of "loyalty demonstrations" at which Moi reminded Kenyan citizens of the power he had to destroy the livelihoods of those who criticized the government. Just two months before the staged demonstrations, the wife of the detainee Raila Odinga had filed suit in the

High Court for a writ of habeas corpus on behalf of her husband. Shortly thereafter, she was dismissed from her job as a teacher on the grounds that it was in the public interest to do so.^[13] At the loyalty demonstrations, the president announced that he planned more such firings, saying that not only dissidents but those who expressed sympathy with their causes would find themselves without jobs. Moi's New Year's speech of 1989 reiterated the point: citizens should follow the Office of the President if they wanted to keep their jobs.

KANU also began to absorb other bodies that had long performed representative functions. In 1988, the new finance minister, George Saitoti, announced that henceforth lawyers would have to register their practices under the Trade Licensing Act, enabling the Office of the President to put any lawyer of whose activities it disapproved out of business. The Law Society of Kenya (LSK), an independent association set up by an act of Parliament, saw this step as a preliminary to its own absorption into the party. The lawyers' anxiety increased when the president attacked the LSK as "absurd, ridiculous, and obnoxious" and questioned the patriotism of its members, arguing that, "the identity of lawyers is not Kenyan." Vice President Josephat Karanja referred to the legal profession as a "nerve centre for imperialists."^[14]

The Kenya Law Society was spared, but other groups were not. In June 1990, KANU made official an association with Maendeleo ya Wanawake, the national women's organization, although it did not merge the organization into its own women's league. It also announced that the national confederation of trade unions would associate with the party, linking the already centrally controlled labor movement still more closely with the regime. In taking these steps, the office of the president and the KANU hierarchy were pursuing a course common to other African party-states. In Zaire, for example, the MPR had absorbed all associations, from youth groups and women's groups to sports clubs. The effect, and probably the intent, was to co-opt political activity by these groups and purchase the support of their leaders with promises of advancement. The ultimate goal was to ensure that there would be no bases for organization and political activity outside the state.^[15]

The capture of KANU by the State House was institutionalized in 1988, when a new Ministry for National Guidance and Political Affairs was created to formally attach the party to the state. The mandate of the new ministry included the promotion and mobilization of KANU, projection of the nyayo philosophy, and censorship of print and film media. James Njiru, a longtime proponent of KANU supremacy, be-

came the first to hold the portfolio. Njiru immediately hinted that newspapers and magazines that did not follow the KANU line would find themselves out of business and urged that the queuing system Kenya had adopted should replace the secret ballot all over Africa.^[16] Under this new regime, the party grew less tolerant of those who criticized government policies or practices, expanded its ability to intervene in the decisions of other representative bodies, and acquired increasing police functions.

Finally, KANU's police functions expanded during this period. As early as 1987, a KANU leader, the late David Okiki Amayo, announced that the police would receive assistance from the members of the party.^[17] Moi's New Year's speech of 1989 empowered KANU to monitor public places, such as bars, hotels, and restaurants, to identify those who opposed the Office of the President. In practice, the country's internal security forces had engaged in such surveillance for many years. Involvement of the general KANU membership greatly increased the scope of operations, however, and introduced an added element of fear that any party member one might have offended, for whatever reason, would be listening for the slightest slip of the tongue. The notice had a chilling effect on political speech, although members of Parliament already felt so constrained by the middle of 1988 that most bills passed with little or no debate, and even the discussion of the usually controversial Foreign Investment Bill took only forty minutes.

The controversial youth wing, once met with resentment by many KANU politicians, resumed its watchdog activities. Youth-wingers were often present at police raids and in marketplaces. In April 1989, it was the youth wing that interrupted a church sermon by the Anglican bishop David Gitari and provoked the party to summon the cleric to appear before the party hierarchy on the grounds that he had waged a press war against KANU and the government.

To fund its expanded activities, KANU either had to increase its dues, increase its membership, or look to other sources of support. In 1985 there was a major campaign to fill the party coffers. Civil servants were told that they would have to join KANU and shell out the money for a membership card but that they could not hold office in the party. This bred resentment, and there was considerable uncertainty at the time about whether the policy would be maintained. It was, and civil servants found that the party was able to deduct the dues directly from their paychecks, before they reached the recipients. In some rural areas, the administration, chartered to help KANU collect dues, prevented

people from trading in local markets until they showed proof of membership. This approach had its limits as a revenue-gathering strategy, however. The party leaders turned elsewhere. Usually reliable sources suggest that at least in the late 1980s, funds amounting to $250 million were being diverted from customs to party officials. Whether the end use was for party finances or personal profit is not clear.

Changing Patterns of Participation

The changes in Kenya's single-party system affected the character of "civil society," or interest-group formation, in several ways. First, it altered the incentives to create organized interests. As David Leonard has noted, where power is concentrated in the hands of a head of state, the ability to secure economic demands derives primarily from personal relationships with the president and his close associates. To gain access to resources, politicians, civil servants, businessmen, and farmers alike seek to cultivate patronage networks, which may increase stratification in the society but confer mixed economic advantages upon their participants. Personalization of power, where that power remains effective, thus attenuates interest-group formation.

Second, the new relationship between KANU and the Office of the President increased the risks of expressing criticism on the floor of Parliament and the difficulty of meeting in privately organized groups, long technically illegal, to talk about policies or about civil liberties. Organized, public opposition by members of Parliament to the expanding role of KANU and the evolving relationship between the party and the Office of the President diminished substantially. Because of the high risk factor, expression of discontent for most who objected to policy decisions or restrictions on political space was likely to take the form of sudden street outbursts or highly symbolic gestures, unless an individual or group thought it could secure special protection.

Third, in an effort both to lower the risks associated with protest and increase bargaining leverage, opponents of the government sought to establish ties with groups in the international community. In the Cold War period, Odinga had tried to sustain his position by turning to the east. The tactic proved unsuccessful. In the post–Cold War period, individuals and groups sought to ally themselves with internationally recognized churches, bar associations, or other movements, or to affect the conditions multilateral and bilateral donors attached to loans and grants to the government of Kenya.

Elite Opposition

The outspokenness of the former cabinet ministers Charles Rubia and Kenneth Matiba constituted a clear and important exception to the rule and focused an otherwise diffuse opposition during 1989 and 1990. The efforts of Martin Shikuku, Kimani wa Nyoike, and Masinde Muliro also played a role. Rubia and Matiba were the central figures in the main, elite-directed opposition to the Moi government. Rubia had played the role of "moderate" and quiet defender of civil liberties during the 1970s when the Family had urged Kenyatta to move against members of his cabinet with whom they disagreed. During the late 1970s and early 1980s, Rubia's comments rarely appeared in the press, however, and to outside observers he seemed to have disappeared from the scene. Although his interventions in the 1970s and again in the mid 1980s arguably came too late to block the actions of the Office of the President, in both instances, but especially in the second case, he played a key role in defending limited space for public debate, for which he risked much. His record in Nairobi city politics, to which he devoted much of his career, was, on many occasions, less noble.

Rubia intervened first to defend those in the churches who had objected to the president's insistence on abandoning the secret ballot and replacing it with a queuing system. In August 1986, the National Council of Churches of Kenya (NCCK) had issued a statement announcing that its member pastors would not participate in elections that used the queuing system. The Law Society of Kenya joined the NCCK in calling for public debate of the issue. The two organizations had started to work together in the early 1980s, when they constituted the Public Law Institute, a legal aid and civil rights organization. Only three members of Parliament—Masinde Muliro, Kimani wa Nyoike, and Charles Rubia—spoke out on the queuing issue, however.

Rubia intervened again, four months later, during debate of a constitutional amendment bill that eliminated security of tenure in office for the attorney general, controller, and auditor. The bill passed the legislature, with almost no discussion, in only two sittings. The only dissenting voice, this time, was Rubia's, although another MP later joined him. Within a month, the police picked up Rubia for questioning.

A year later, Rubia, who had long been MP for the Nairobi constituency of Starehe, succumbed to the new 70 percent preliminary election rule, which allowed a candidate who won 70 percent or more of the vote in a primary election to advance to the general election unopposed.

In a rigged ballot, Rubia lost to an opponent, 29 percent to 71 percent. Later in 1988, Rubia lost his position on the board of the Commercial Development Corporation, an industrial parastatal. The wealthy businessman, Francis Thuo, the member of the cabinet who defended Rubia at the meeting when the decision was taken, resigned his own position on the board two days later in protest. In 1989, the Nairobi KANU branch suspended Rubia on the grounds that he had participated in anti-government demonstrations and recommended that the national party expel him. The national committee of KANU followed the advice of the party branch and removed Rubia in a purge that included thirteen others. Supporting these decisions, the president issued a statement, saying that he intended to hunt down the advocates of multi-partyism "like rats."^[18]

Rubia remained silent for several months, then joined forces with the former cabinet minister Kenneth Matiba to take the defense of "political space" and civil liberties outside the confines of the Parliament and Office of the President, where both were accustomed to fighting their battles. Matiba had entered political life only in 1979, as representative for Mbiri constituency in Murang'a District, Central Province. Like Rubia, he was a wealthy businessman, a member not of the petite bourgeoisie but of the matajiri class. Like many of Kenya's senior civil servants and many of the country's early nationalist leaders, Matiba was a graduate of Alliance High School. Just before independence, he was appointed permanent secretary in the Ministry of Education, where he served as one of the country's first three African permanent secretaries. In the early and mid 1960s, he held posts in the Ministry of Home Affairs and the Ministry of Commerce and Industry. Using the skills and savings he had built as a civil servant, Matiba left government in 1968 and took a job in Kenya Breweries, Ltd. A year later, he moved up to the post of general manager of Kenya Breweries, and then became managing director. By 1977, he had become executive chairman of East African Breweries, Ltd., the parent company. He invested his earnings in the creation of several private companies, including the Alliance Hotel Group. Indeed, later in his career, Matiba is reported to have told the president that to bring chaos upon the country was clearly not his intention in making calls for greater political space; tourism was highly sensitive to political disruption, and he would surely lose a fortune from low occupancy rates in his Mombasa hotels. While holding these business positions, Matiba also took time to help manage the Kenya Football Federation (KFF) and other sports and charitable activities.^[19]

Matiba's record of electoral service won him a reputation as a meticulous planner and manager with a flamboyant style. In the months leading to his election in 1979 and later, Matiba applied his business analysis skills to his constituency, developing careful studies of the economic needs of different locations and publishing brochures to attract business to the area. He served as minister for culture and social services, minister for health, and finally, minister for transport and communications. In all of these areas, he made himself a visible public figure, making visits to projects and facilities that were poorly managed and openly discussing both problems and criteria for measuring improvement.

In December 1988, Matiba resigned from the cabinet, on the eve of the arrival of a number of state guests. The reasons for his resignation centered on irregularities in the grass-roots elections for KANU posts in his area, which were later nullified by the district commissioner, and the reluctance of the Murang'a KANU branch chairman to hold fresh elections. In a rigged election, Matiba had failed to carry even his home area. Matiba's objections to the handling of the voting brought censure from the national chairman of KANU, however, and a threat to initiate disciplinary proceedings. The minister for national guidance and political affairs reiterated the KANU chairman's point. Matiba resigned on the grounds that his two colleagues had questioned his integrity and that he was concerned that election irregularities were taking place, not just in the location in question, but in other areas of the country as well.

In May 1990, the two former members of Parliament called a joint press conference to urge legalization of opposition parties. Coincidentally, the U.S. ambassador, Smith Hempstone, had addressed the same call to the members of the Rotary Club over lunch that day, saying it was likely that the U.S. Congress would tie future aid to political performance in all parts of the world. The newspapers associated the two speeches, printing the news of one on the front page and the news of the other on the back. KANU and the Moi government denounced the Matiba-Rubia press conference and its instigators as foreign-inspired.^[20] One minister accused Smith Hempstone of "spending his time loitering in slum areas in Nairobi, thus proving beyond reasonable doubt that he was not a true diplomat."^[21] The chance association quickly led to greater contacts between the ambassador and the Rubia-Matiba group, but to little more than that. Several days later, Rubia and Matiba issued a thirteen-page discussion of the merits of a multi-party system.

The Matiba-Rubia protest echoed earlier rebellions of propertied citizens in other countries. They attributed the country's increasing eco-

nomic problems to KANU's "inflexibility and indifference to demands for public accountability."^[22] The themes of their campaign included, first and foremost, a vigorous denunciation of the government's inability to contain the spread of corrupt practices. They noted that "while the Government has amply acknowledged this cancerous phenomenon, the Government seems to be helpless in dealing with it."^[23] They lamented the "glaring irregularities" that plagued public services such as the Post Office, the Ports Authority, the National Cereals Board, and the General Medical Stores. They condemned "tribal patronage" that supplanted merit as a criterion for advancement. Interference with freedom of association outside the political realm was the main element of their platform, however. They noted the adverse consequences of the abolition of the Kenya Farmers' Association, the thoughtless reorganization of the Coffee Board and the Kenya Tea Development Authority, and the destruction of the Kenya Planters' Cooperative Union (KPCU). "There appeared to be no rational reason for what happened," they said. "What has been the result? Farmers are not paid their due and no reasons are given."^[24] Both politicians and their associates stressed that they did not want to bring chaos to their country through their actions. It was simply that politics had interfered with the economic survival of firms and farms and the ability of citizens to live without fear.

Rumor rapidly spread that the two men had already lined up a shadow cabinet that included Rubia as prime minister, the Luo patriarch Oginga Odinga as vice president, Josephat Karanja as minister for foreign affairs, Luhya Masinde Muliro as minister of state in the office of the president, and a number of other critics of the Moi government. The author Ngugi wa Thiong'o was mentioned as a potential minister for universities; Gibson Kamau Kuria, one of the lawyers for Rubia and Matiba, was allegedly the candidate for chief justice; and Bishop Henry Okullu, an important leader of the church-based opposition to political restrictions (see pp. 190–92 below), won a place on the list as minister for culture and religious affairs. The rumored cabinet showed due respect for Kenya's different ethnic and regional communities, allocating a number of the portfolios to non-Kikuyu supporters (both Rubia and Matiba hailed from the Kikuyu community and specifically from the Murang'a group). Those close to the two leaders say there was never such a shadow cabinet, however, and that they were not nearly as well organized as rumor suggested.

The events of June and early July were decisive. In the first week of June, Rubia and Matiba applied to the Nairobi provincial commis-

sioner for a license to hold a public rally and continued their own private meetings with Oginga Odinga and Achieng Oneko to try to get the Luo leaders of the former Kenya People's Union to support their proposals. The provincial commissioner denied the request, and a spokesman for the Moi government warned Kenyan citizens that it had not licensed any meetings on multi-partyism. On Wednesday, July 4, police arrested and detained Rubia and Matiba. Several lawyers and odinga's son, Raila Odinga, also landed behind bars. Gibson Kamau Kuria and his family took refuge in the U.S. embassy and eventually made their way to the United States. His law partner, Kiraitu Murungi, was abroad at the time and also took refuge in the United States.

The crackdowns on Matiba, Rubia, and other advocates of multipartyism in Kenya provoked large-scale violence in Nairobi and several Kenyan towns, beginning on July 7, or "Saba Saba Day," as people later referred to it. On that day, Rubia and Matiba were to have sponsored their public rally for multi-party democracy at Nairobi's Kamukunji meeting ground. In the preceding days, residents crowded into the banks and withdrew their savings. Some bought extra food. Rumors of American ships approaching Kenya's shores to support intervention by advocates of a multi-party system circulated in some quarters.^[25] Turbulence broke out. Thousands of people poured into the streets in Nairobi, where rioting and looting continued through the weekend in the poorer neighborhoods. Nakuru, Murang'a, Nyeri, Nyandarua, Thika, Narok, and Kiambu, the towns at the center of each of the main Kikuyu strongholds, erupted similarly. In Limuru, the KANU branch headquarters burned to the ground. At least fifteen people died in the disturbances, according to government sources.^[26] The rioters offered some political statements, but the events appear to have been largely unorganized, with a large admixture of unfocused popular discontent and a certain amount of purely self-serving activity. The riots caught world attention, however, and brought the plight of the Kenyan advocates of political pluralism under scrutiny.

As members of the business and legal communities began to try to find ways to secure changes in the political system, the heat of government denunciations increased. Minister for Local Government William ole Ntimama heatedly attributed the bid for a multi-party system to the Kikuyu and announced that "a certain ethnic group . . . should be cut down to size in the same manner in which the Ibo of Nigeria were in the sixties."^[27] Such statements violated the norms of what most Kenyans, including many clearly in the Moi camp, believed acceptable. It crossed

a line recognized by Kenyans in all walks of life: the line between a call for negotiation and a call for the kinds of conflict that ravaged Kenya's neighbors, Uganda and the Sudan, as well as countries such as Liberia and Nigeria. Ntimama's statement generated demands not only for his resignation but also for the dismissal of several other ministers.

Mwakenya and Diffuse Protest

During the 1980s, as political restrictions mounted and members of Parliament became more reticent about speaking out, rumors of a diffuse, usually leaderless underground opposition grew. In a few cases, politicians in exile, such as Koigi wa Wamwere, who had fled to Norway, were alleged to have created parties of their own. The author Ngugi wa Thiong'o founded a London-based association called Umoja, from the Swahili word for "unity," which stood principally for a radical redistribution of land. The members of the group were largely intellectuals.^[28] By far the most talked about and least understood of the domestically active groups was Mwakenya, an "opposition" without any clear organization, believed to operate clandestinely and partly through "oaths," as had the Mau Mau in the 1950s, but with a base in Britain.

Mwakenya certainly existed, although the government greatly exaggerated its membership as a pretext for arresting or limiting the activities of critics who held a wide variety of views. In 1986 alone, the Moi government imprisoned over 100 people on charges of belonging to it,^[29] and alleged affiliation has provided the pretext for numerous arrests and detentions since. Some critics of the government have suggested that the movement is nevertheless extremely small—a very loose affiliation directed largely by a small group of exiles abroad.

Those who have limited information about Mwakenya suggest that the movement is leaderless, with urban, rural, and exile components. The original impetus allegedly came from university researchers, with whose arrests the government first brought the group to public attention in 1985–86, although it is now believed that many of those detained had no connection to Mwakenya whatsoever. University graduates were allegedly the main people responsible for diffusing the "platform," a vague amalgam of demands for legalization of opposition parties, opposition to foreign military facilities, and a quasi-Marxist analysis of the country's economic and political woes. The "Draft Minimum Programme" of Mwakenya included demands for social justice, which it defined as more efficient public transportation, improved working and

living conditions, guaranteed medical care, and free and compulsory secondary education.^[30] Rumor suggested that the movement had a rural wing that was heavily Kikuyu in composition. The farmers of the Nakuru and Nyeri districts, the strongholds of the Mau Mau revolt, were supposed to be the bearers of Mwakenya ideas among farmers.^[31]

Word about Mwakenya spread through papers that quickly appeared and disappeared, under a variety of names, Pambana (The Struggle) and Mpatanishi (The Arbiter) being the commonest. Most first appeared in Britain, but because the Moi government made it a high crime to paraphrase or quote from any of the Mwakenya leaflets, few of the statements came to the attention of the broader public. A London-based exile group called Ukenya was allegedly Mwakenya's external affiliate. Founded by Yusuf Hassan, from the Somali areas near Garissa, Ukenya had a parallel platform. Hassan's family disowned their son upon hearing of his involvement, and so powerful was the popular fear of the government's rage that Hassan's home community publicly disassociated itself from any of Ukenya's actions or any criticism of KANU.^[32]

Although broad, diffuse opposition of this sort was the government's worst nightmare, because it was impossible to stop it in its tracks by arresting the "leaders," it is also the case that such movements offered no credible replacement in the event the regime fell. There were no politicians practiced in building ties with constituents in open political competition, no elites with experience in managing large organizations, much less a government ministry, and none of the habits of compromise and conciliation essential to the functioning of a multi-party system.

"Civil Society" and Opposition Success

The difficulties and the limited successes opposition figures experienced between 1980 and 1981 in preventing further encroachment on space for public contestation were in large part the consequence of new laws and expanded surveillance capacities, but interest-group structure made a difference too. The incentive structure in the single-party system made it very difficult for politicians to organize to protect their ability to speak and to associate. Once implemented, repressive legislation increased the risks associated with opposition, and encroachment on civil liberties accelerated. Under these conditions, only interest-group action that threatened to bring the economy to a standstill or to undermine the remunerativeness of the rental havens those in power had secured for

themselves was likely to block further consolidation of the party-state. In the Kenyan case, members of the elite with private business interests had been unable to use the partial protection that independence from a government salary provided to express criticism of the Moi regime effectively. Those who were less well-off found it very difficult to mount collective action. Furthermore, their ranks were divided. Some saw the Moi government's policies, which distributed resources away from the traditionally powerful Kikuyu matajiri, as "populist" and therefore acceptable. Attacks on Charles Njonjo, in particular, conferred on Moi a "populist" label that he did not fully deserve.

The Matajiri and the Legal Community

At the end of the 1980s and into 1990, calls for a multi-party system and for a simple loosening of political restrictions came principally from the Kenyan private business community. Few members of this group were publicly vocal in their protests, but discontent grew rapidly. The main concern was that the president was increasingly able to use his expanded powers to intervene in business matters. Appointment of close associates to key economic posts led to use of political criteria in the allocation of critical licenses and even in access to bank loans and foreign exchange. Second, meritocratic personnel policies were difficult to maintain because of interference in the hiring and firing of employees. Third, State House succeeded in manipulating the political process in order to secure new rules that promoted the private business interests of the president and his associates. For example, when Moi acquired bakery businesses, existing bakeries discovered that they faced new rules, quickly legislated, to limit their selling range to Nairobi and to eliminate the competition they would have provided to the president's own enterprises in other areas. Planning business activities, including business expansion, was difficult under these conditions.

Although Rubia had protested restriction of civil liberties on several occasions, his criticism of the Moi government began with his belief that it had done too little to promote the interests of indigenous private-sector entrepreneurs.^[33] The government did not interfere with the commercial interests of either Matiba or Rubia, but it did withdraw the passports of the two men in the late 1980s, limiting their ability to work with foreign partners. Furthermore, the president had appointed a disproportionately large number of Kalenjin to key economic posts, creating the specter of increasingly politicized infrastructural services and

parastatal sectors. Under Moi, Kalenjin gained control of the governor-ship of the Central Bank, the Ministry for Cooperative Development, the Ministry of Local Government, and the post of commissioner of cooperatives. The chairs of the Kenya Commercial Bank and Kenya National Insurance were both Kalenjin. Moi's community also gained the directorships of Kenya Posts and Telecommunications, the Agricultural Finance Corporation, the Agricultural Development Corporation, Kenya Industrial Estates, the National Cereals and Produce Board, the Kenya Grain Growers' Cooperative Union, Nyayo Tea Zone, Nyayo Bus Company, and the Kenya Broadcasting Corporation. The government decided to de-register the Kenya Coffee Growers' Union, the representative of smallholder coffee interests, which were predominantly Kikuyu, and sidelined the other body whose officers are elected by coffee growers, the Kenya Planters' Cooperative Union. It also chose to reshuffle and reorganize the management of the internationally successful Kenya Tea Development Authority.^[34] Thus, to the extent that the decision to take a stand on the restriction of political space in 1989–91 was business-related, it was based less on objection to the actual content of policies regarding trade and industry than it was on the long-term prospects for local businessmen in a country where the personal power of the president made greater levels of interference and uncertainty likely.

Class sentiment and class organization remained inchoate, however. On the face of it, commercial and industrial interests in Parliament were stronger than they had ever been. In the years since independence, the social backgrounds of members of Parliament had changed to include many more businessmen than it had originally. In 1963, business was the main occupation or source of income of 6 percent of the members of Parliament; by 1983 the figure had risen to 27 percent.^[35] Just over half of the new entrants to Parliament in 1983 were businessmen. Originally, teachers, former civil servants, and professionals (doctors and lawyers) had dominated the ranks of parliamentarians. Although the proportion of professionals remained relatively constant over the years, the proportion of teachers and farmers diminished. Business interests in Parliament were unable to unite in objecting to the president's appointment policy, however. Indeed, by the end of the 1980s, most bills passed with little or no discussion.

Finally, among the majority of businessmen—who could not, after all, count themselves among the matajiri—economic interests were mixed. Most businessmen had other sources of income: small or medium-sized farms, for example. Many had mixed economic heri-

tages, too. At the same time that the occupational backgrounds of members of Parliament had changed, so had the average age, which increased. It is likely that many of the men and women who started as teachers and civil servants launched their own businesses and later acquired the major part of their income from these enterprises. Rapid social mobility and social change may well have attenuated class sentiment. Moreover, the reduction in Kikuyu business fortunes potentially created short-term opportunities for members of other cultural groups to launch businesses. Certainly, the Kalenjin benefited greatly from the difficulties the Kikuyu business-owners experienced.

As both Matiba and Rubia were aware, too, most private-sector businesses were heavily dependent on government capital, contracts, and services. Where appointments to the latter were highly politicized, it was possible for a businessman to face politically motivated and economically devastating cutoffs of electricity, telephone, water, sewer, and transport services or slowdowns in the transfer of bank funds. Shipments could be delayed at truck depots, airports, and harbors. Where these shipments included perishables, such as horticultural exports, the business could easily lose its inventories within a matter of hours. Although the proportion of business equity controlled by Kenyan businessmen had increased markedly since independence, political organization had not expanded concomitantly.^[36]

More important, neither Rubia nor Matiba nor any other member of the matajiri class commanded control of a critical sector of the economy, so neither was it possible to initiate a sectorwide strike or slowdown of such potentially devastating proportions that the president would have an incentive to come to the bargaining table. Few other members of the matajiri class openly supported the two men. As noted above, Francis Thuo, a wealthy businessman and founder of the Kenya Stock Exchange, resigned one of his public positions when the government moved to dismiss Rubia from his parastatal posts after his suspension from the party, but few others were able or willing to make similar demonstrations, or could do so without severe repercussions.

The Transport Sector

Moi's greatest fear was that the opposition might acquire bargaining leverage by building contacts and power within the transportation sector. Bus, taxi, or truckers' strikes could easily cripple government business and the Kenyan economy. The sector demonstrated its strength on several occasions before the party and State House took steps to counteract its power. In 1986, the government

announced that it would enforce a "no-standing" rule against vehicles and drivers of the Kenya Bus Service, Ltd., a partly British-owned company and the principal provider of bus transportation between the capital and periurban areas. Typically, buses carried as many passengers as could crowd into the aisles. The government argued that standing should not be permitted. The company responded to the ruling by briefly withdrawing bus service from the routes around Nairobi. So great were the resulting disorder and public outcry that the government relented temporarily. It is widely thought that the State House was perturbed by this demonstration of power. Within three months, it began to run "nyayo buses" on many routes, the vehicles often being contributed by European donors and the drivers being drawn from the National Youth Service, a government-run vocational training program. Moi took the decision to launch the service at a KANU parliamentary group meeting shortly after the incident.

Two years later, in 1988, the Nyayo Bus Services Corporation was established to manage the growing fleet of vehicles, which provided increasing competition to Kenya Bus Services, Ltd. KANU retained a hand in its direction. The Nyayo Bus Services Corporation faced a much lower cost structure than Kenya Bus Services, Ltd. All of the vehicles used by Nyayo Bus Services were donated, mostly by the Netherlands and Italy. All of the staff members came from the National Youth Service, effectively subsidizing the firm's labor costs. The Economist Intelligence Unit reported in 1989 that Nyayo Bus was the fastest growing enterprise in Kenya.^[37] Kenya Bus Services, which not only faced higher costs but found itself forced to abandon several routes because of the eventual successful enforcement of the no-standing rule, was on its way to ruin.

The main alternative to bus transport was the matatu system, a relatively unregulated, low-cost form of travel in converted pickup trucks, whose owners were variously members of the petite bourgeoisie or of the matajiri class, some of whom owned multiple vehicles. This part of the sector also proved to have strong bargaining power. In the late 1980s, owners of matatus belonged to one of two associations, the Matatu Vehicle Owners Association (MVOA) and the much smaller Matatu Association of Kenya. Drivers were often young and vehicles poorly maintained. The incidence of fatal traffic accidents was extremely high.

In the wake of several horrifying accidents, the State House moved to expand safety standards for the sector but met resistance every step of

the way. First, in 1986, Moi announced a campaign to remove poorly maintained matatus from the road. The MVOA protested the ensuing police crackdown with a slowdown that left many workers stranded. The police eventually relented. In June 1987, the government announced a requirement that matatus be equipped with speed governors to ensure that vehicles did not exceed acceptable limits. The governors proved extremely expensive—about half the cost of the matatu itself in some cases. Owners and operators protested by going on strike. Again, the State House acceded to the MVOA's demands. Finally, after a crash that killed thirty people in 1988, the government ordered poorly maintained matatus off the road and announced that drivers would have to undergo retesting. It launched sweeps by the police and by members of the National Youth Service. Again, the MVOA initiated a strike, and the authorities caved in.

The content of most of these encounters was not explicitly political. The speed-governor requirement carried some political overtones. Knowledgeable sources have said that several of the president's associates imported the equipment into the country just before and after the ruling, expecting to make money, but that they lost substantial sums as a result of the standoff and policy reversal. In 1990, however, the government moved against owners and drivers it suspected were playing seditious music for the passengers' listening pleasure: songs protesting the razing of shanties in Nairobi; some of Kenyatta's early speeches; "Mathina ma Matiba" ("Matiba's Tribulations"); and the singer Tom Kimani's "Patriotic Contributions," commemorating J. M. Kariuki, and "Big Fish" (samaki kubwa , "big fish," is a common term for wealthy or powerful men).^[38] Many of these tapes circulated in advance of the Saba Saba riots, and during the Saba Saba demonstrations members of the public burned several vehicles that did not play the tapes. At that point, the State House moved to de-register the associations. Eventually, the government de-registered the Matatu Vehicle Owners Association, making it more difficult for the sector to organize to influence policy.

The Export-Crop Sector

Growers of crops for export could also muster some bargaining power in the Kenyan economy, in large part because of the country's heavy dependence upon the revenues these generated as a source of foreign exchange. Growers thus constituted potential allies for the advocates of political pluralism. Threats to withhold delivery of crops proved only temporarily useful, however. After a protracted struggle and the collapse of coffee prices, farmers in that sector became

less vocal in their struggles and representative associations were either disbanded or weakened. In the tea sector, the Moi government succeeded in reorganizing the Kenya Tea Development Authority to give higher prices and higher quotas to farmers from the Rift Valley, particularly from Kalenjin strongholds, at the expense of Central Province communities that cultivated tea that typically commanded higher prices on the international market. The introduction of Nyayo Tea Zones, a new parastatal, also limited the bargaining power of outraged tea farmers by flooding the tea factories with leaves from new, government-controlled plantations and rendering smallholders' tea less valuable.

The Moi government and coffee growers clashed over an extended period, beginning in 1983, when the government decided to turn the Kenya Planters' Cooperative Union (KPCU), the main coffee growers' association, into a parastatal. The coffee cooperatives had long been both a source of substantial income and a site of petty corruption and mismanagement. Certainly, there was a rationale for trying to clean up the cooperatives in an effort to ensure that a higher proportion of coffee receipts went to the farmers who produced the beans. The popular impression of the government's actions in trying to dissolve or reorganize the KPCU, however, was that the State House wanted to reduce the voice of farmers in the management of their affairs and in formation of Coffee Board policies. Specifically, Moi wanted to reduce Kikuyu influence.

The farmers repulsed the first effort to eliminate the KPCU. Then, in October 1986, the government tried to introduce a new method for paying farmers, and the country's lobby for large plantations, the Kenya Coffee Growers' Association (KCGA), joined forces with the smallholders and rebelled. When farmers threatened to stop delivering beans to the Coffee Board, the government relented. In March 1987, the KPCU successfully fought off an effort by the State House to remove the organization's two representatives from the directorship of the Coffee Board, again through the threat of holding up delivery.

Unable to attenuate the power of the coffee growers in this way, the government moved to try to divide the growers on class lines—to sever the link between the small growers and the matajiri. In June 1987, the government announced that it wanted to disband the KPCU and replace it with a National Coffee Cooperative Union (NCCU). The rationales were various. The State House had earlier embarked on a shake-up of personnel in both the Coffee Board and the Kenya Tea Development Authority. These reshufflings had placed a large number of inexperi-

enced managers in high positions, and the reliability of the services both organizations provided suffered in the view of farmers, who were irate. Some members of the Moi government suggested that the owners of large farms (more than fifty acres) had stirred up the trouble and that this group had benefited disproportionately from the services of the marketing boards in the past. Indeed, they said, the effort to disband the KPCU stemmed from a desire to curb the influence of large-scale farmers in that organization and give greater voice to smallholders whose plots were smaller than fifty acres.^[39]

Growers used tried-and-true tactics to repel the government's initiative, and they temporarily persuaded it to back down, but were eventually unsuccessful. When the State House tried the intermediate step of imposing new voting rules and new directors, farmers gathered to protest these actions and threatened to suspend deliveries of beans to the Coffee Board. They further called for elimination of the coffee export tax, and for suspension of the Coffee Board's management to permit investigation of the alleged disappearance of beans from its warehouses. Again, the government backed off its demands, but only temporarily.

Shortly after the protests by farmers, the Criminal Investigation Department picked up the KPCU's managing director, Henry Kinyua, for questioning. Although he was eventually released, Kinyua stepped down from his position. In 1987, the KPCU itself was first dismantled and then suspended, its functions being assumed by the Coffee Board. These changes were interpreted by many as an attack on Kikuyu growers, who generated 70 percent of the country's coffee crop,^[40] although the government may also have taken the measure to reduce the bargaining power of coffee growers who wanted to exceed the country's coffee quota, set by the International Coffee Organization.

Eventually, the government allowed a reorganized KPCU to register again, but in a greatly reduced form. Until 1989, the KPCU had been one of the chief sources of short-term loans for coffee farmers. It was able to play this role because its assets made it easy for it to obtain credit, which it then used to extend loans to farmers, and because it could collect on the loans by recovering the money from the farmers' coffee receipts.^[41] To the degree that the reduced role allowed the union limited both its assets and its access to farmers' earnings, its credit functions, and consequently the utility of the union to growers, were undermined.

The government was less disposed to bargain with the lobby for large plantation owners. In early 1989, it dissolved the Kenya Coffee Grow-

ers' Association (KCGA). The Weekly Review said this step "marked a decisive stage in recent moves by the state to reduce the influence of mass-based autonomous farmers' organizations in decisions affecting the coffee industry."^[42] As had the KCPU, the KCGA had strongly protested the coffee amendment bill of 1987, which proposed many changes in the role of the Coffee Board, including making the chief executive of the board responsible, not to the board's directors, who typically included farmers, but to the minister of agriculture.

Matiba and Rubia had expressed concern that tea farmers, too, were losing their voice in public policy—or at least, tea farmers from the Central Province zones that produced high-grade leaves. The Kenya Tea Development Authority (KTDA) was long recognized as a success story rare among parastatal organizations. During the 1980s, the Moi government took several steps to reorganize the company, replacing the older, more experienced managers with new people more beholden to the president. It also introduced measures that increased the power of tea growers in the west of the country and sowed division among tea farmers, reducing the effectiveness of group action.

The changes in administrative personnel had rapid consequences for the reliability of tea-collection services and for the condition of the country's hundreds of kilometers of tea roads, many of which became increasingly impassable. Farmers in Central Province also began to charge that the KTDA managers or the government were manipulating the level of end-of-season payments, which were supposed to reflect movements in world prices, in contrast to initial payments, which were in proportion to the quantity of tea leaves delivered. In 1989, several hundred farmers in Murang'a District tried to protest deteriorating services and price manipulation by boycotting picking and by burning 2.5 tons of tea leaves already harvested.^[43] Matiba, who hailed from Murang's District, was consequently quite attentive to farmers' demands and incorporated them into his platform.

The Moi government moreover introduced new policies that increased Kenya's tea production but divided the ranks of producers, decreasing the effectiveness of farmers' associations. In 1984, the president launched an effort allegedly both to enhance soil conservation and to increase tea production. The idea was to provide funds for Kenyans to plant narrow strips of tea adjacent to gazetted forests in the multiple expectation of limiting soil erosion when trees were cut, enhancing the capacity of the forest police to observe illegal cutting by creating a space around these forests in which trespassers could be easily seen, and bol-

stering the country's tea production. In 1987, the president created a new parastatal, Nyayo Tea Zones Development Corporation (NTZDC), to administer the program. By the end of the 1980s, the NTZDC had established zones in fifteen districts, mostly in the Kalenjin and Luhya areas of the western provinces but also alongside the KTDA-run plots in Central Province, encompassing about 15,000 farmers.^[44]

The new Nyayo tea zones immediately created problems for smallholders, however, particularly in Central Province and Kericho, where they competed with smallholder production. When the zones were created, the NTZDC decided not to build tea factories but to use existing facilities in nearby smallholder areas instead. That meant, however, that factory capacity was swamped by the new production. Smallholders could not have their tea treated, as they had in the past, because the leaves from the Nyayo zones took precedence. Matiba was right when he noted: "Tea from the Nyayo Tea Zones has completely swamped up the existing capacity."^[45] Moreover, the zones interfered with other sources of smallholders' income. Most households were able to obtain permission from the local forest police to graze livestock on gazetted lands during some seasons of the year, or during alternate years. They were restricted to the fringe areas, but they nonetheless had use of them. The Nyayo tea zones interfered with this system, however. In many cases, the government established its zones, not along a narrow strip of already deforested land, but on swaths of land a mile wide cut from existing stands of trees. The forests were placed off limits for grazing in consequence, and farmers were forced to secure pasture elsewhere.

The creation of the tea zones meant that the government received a larger share of the income from tea than it had in the past, and that smallholders lost influence as their share of the proceeds dropped. Withholding or burning tea was no longer the devastating tactic it might once have been. It could no longer be used to force government attention to farmers' concerns. Thus, although growers of coffee and tea, especially in Central Province, were discontented and a potential reserve of followers for an opposition party, they could no longer by themselves lend opposition leaders bargaining power.

The Lawyers

Restrictions on political association prevented formation of an opposition party, or even efforts to plan protest. Given the limitations on even small-group discussion of political events, it was extremely difficult for ideas and information to pass between members of the matajiri. There were only two points of indirect contact between

individual members of the class and between these men and women and other Kenyans: the lawyers and the clergy. Despite political restrictions, lawyers could still speak with their clients, at least up to a point, and clergy could still speak with members of their congregations or parishes. Through these men and women limited communication could take place, as long as their own positions remained secure. Furthermore, by observing the kinds of cases members of the public asked them to bring, the lawyers, in particular, could see trends in the kinds of problems individuals encountered in their dealings with the government.

Beginning in the 1980s, some members of the legal profession became concerned about the restrictions the Moi government was imposing, and these members sought to organize efforts to challenge laws they believed unconstitutional. They also used their ties to the international legal profession to draw attention to imprisonment of their own members and other Kenyans and to provide a forum for members of other groups to come together. For example, some of the lawyers used the Kenya section of the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ), an organization with consultative status in the U.N. Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) and in the U.N. Education, Science, and Culture Organization (UNESCO), to facilitate communication. The Kenya section of the ICJ started in 1959. In the 1980s, its organizers urged: "The ICJ Kenya Section should as much as possible take practical and consultative measures to bridge the gap between our aspirations and achievements, . . . identify obstacles to the rule of law, and blocks that retard the enjoyment of human rights . . . ICJ Kenya Section can do this by commissioning research papers, studies, and workshops by lawyers and other social actors."^[46] The lawyers created some domestic forums as well. For example, Gitobu Imanyara, later detained, launched the Nairobi Law Monthly as a vehicle through which lawyers could exchange ideas and communicate with the outside world.

For the most part, the lawyers were concerned with the same kinds of issues that motivated Rubia and Matiba and prompted the concerns of Kenya's farmers and businessmen. They argued that three government acts in particular had "converted the rights to free expression into concessions granted at the pleasure of government officials," including officials of KANU.^[47] These were the Societies Act, which required registration of all associations, the Public Order Act, which allowed preventive detention, and the Film and Stage Plays Act, which limited use of communications media. Some of the most outspoken argued that trespasses on the legal rights of individuals and the decline of the Kenyan

economy were the direct consequence of the single-party state, which stifled individual enterprise and initiative.^[48] Others examined the problem from an even broader perspective and argued that the extensive role of government in the economies of African countries, including Kenya, was the root of the problem:

Some African countries which chose socialism as their development model took the view that such freedoms are meaningless to their populations who were half-naked, illiterate, underfed, and diseased. . . . No African country has however been able to achieve any significant economic development through socialism because it is essentially undemocratic. What they have succeeded in doing is increasing repression. . . . Any individual who genuinely criticises a bureaucrat's incompetence, corruption, or mismanagement is accused of sabotage and subversion.^[49]

Some lawyers simply demanded greater government accountability. Most concurred, however, that the single-party system had severely restricted the public debate necessary to an efficient economic system. In 1990, a group of fifty-four lawyers urged a loosening of political restrictions and pointed out that KANU was now a minority party with at most five million members, which left twenty million Kenyans without a party affiliation and completely disenfranchised.^[50]

Because of the character of their profession and their international ties, the lawyers held greater bargaining leverage in dealings with the Moi government and KANU than did most of the country's economic associations. Even their abilities to achieve repeal of restrictions, to block the implementation of additional measures, and to defend clients were very limited, however. Many of the more outspoken landed in detention for some portion of the 1980s, among them John Khaminwa, Koigi wa Wamwere, George Anyona, Gibson Kamau Kuria, and Gitobu Imanyara. Others went into hiding. Furthermore, although the legal community could facilitate the flow of information between other social actors, it could not provide an organizational base. It could not supply cars to send representatives to speak with farmers in rural areas, for example, or do many of the other things that a coherent opposition would have to do to coordinate economic actors and to use that collective leverage to force the president and his party's leadership to the bargaining table.

Finally, the Office of the President had its own ways of shattering the unity of the legal profession. In January–March 1990, several advocates of a multi-party system among the LSK's membership decided to run their own candidate, Paul Muite, for chairman of the society against the

incumbent, Fred Ojiambo. Muite's supporters, including Gibson Kamau Kuria, Kiraitu Murungi, Dr. Oki Ooko-Ombaka, director of the Public Law Institute, and others, drafted an explanation of the circumstances that motivated their campaign:

Deteriorating working conditions, confiscatory taxation, poor remuneration, decline in standards, rampant corruption, constant vilification of lawyers, . . . and the weakening of institutions for the maintenance of rule of law and the administration of justice. They are also talking about the Law Society: . . . the Law Society's remoteness from advocates in rural areas. . . . The Law Society's failure to lobby against legislation adversely affecting advocates. . . . The Law Society's indifference to lack of law reports and legal literature. . . .

. . . Our words are not good enough to remove these complaints. Our words must be matched by positive action.^[51]

There were other statements against Muite from lawyers who were also KANU branch chairmen, suggesting that the government had not extended a passport to Muite in the past because he was "not the type of person who would project the correct image of our beloved Republic to the international community."^[52] The elections themselves were attended by a variety of irregularities. Ballot papers were not sent to people on time. Others were handed to lawyers in person, and the recipients were instructed that they had to indicate their choices then and there and hand the ballot back to the person who had brought it. Ojiambo was declared the winner in an election that provoked outrage among many of the LSK's members. The Muite group sought to carry on its defense of civil liberties, however, working in large teams, all of whose members would have to be arrested in the event the government decided to move against them. For example, when Gitobu Imanyara, editor of the Nairobi Law Monthly, was detained on charges of publishing seditious literature, the lawyer John Khaminwa assembled a group of thirty-one advocates for the defense.^[53]

The Church and Kanu

Church involvement in the protection of civil liberties began in 1986 over objections to replacement of the secret ballot with a queuing system. From the very beginning, there were divisions within the religious community. Although the National Council of Churches of Kenya (NCCK) was the first to speak publicly about loss of civil liberties, some member churches disagreed with the group's position and left the fold.

The NCCK's membership decreased appreciably. In 1986, when the NCCK announced that church leaders and their followers would boycott elections that used the queuing system and published a critique of queuing in Beyond , the church publication, at least three member churches broke with the group. The bishop of the African Independent Pentecostal Church said the NCCK was against African culture. The Gospel Church and Association of Baptist Churches of Nyeri announced their support of KANU. The head of the NCCK set the tone for the majority of the churches, however, when he noted: "The question of disloyalty does not arise . . . debate is a healthy exercise. If a country cannot debate an issue of national significance, we shall be denying ourselves the very roots of democracy."^[54] Over the next four years, the Anglican Church of the Province of Kenya (CPK) and the Presbyterian Church of East Africa (PCEA) played a major role in sustaining discussion of civil liberties and the restriction of political space when public defender groups, such as the Law Society of Kenya, had succumbed to harassment.

The NCCK and the Reverend Alexander Kipsang Muge of the CPK's Eldoret diocese led the attack on queuing and rapidly attracted fire from KANU and from the Office of the President. Rift Valley political leaders came together at a KANU rally in early 1987 to attack Muge, who had trespassed all the more on the president's patience because his diocese included Moi's home area. Muge replied with fighting words. "I shall not protest against the violation of human rights in South Africa if I am not allowed to protest the violation of human rights in my own country," he declared. The mention of South Africa was, of course, a red flag. Muge persisted, and in a sermon spelled out his understanding of his role, pointing out: "I say things that other people don't want to say simply because they will get into trouble with the politicians."^[55]

Muge's remarks won the attention and support of both Anglican and Episcopal leaders around the world, including the archbishop of Canterbury. They created a tactical and stylistic example for other religious communities to follow. The international press responded quickly, alerted to the significance of the church actions by Muge. The BBC broadcast Muge's sermon about the role of the church, allowing Muge to reach many Kenyans who would otherwise not have heard the remarks. The CPK and the NCCK moved quickly to mobilize their international networks and keep the spotlight on the issues raised and on their members, offering a modicum of protection in a dangerous political environment. It also created a new form of political communication,

the sermon, which church leaders soon learned to mimeograph and tape for distribution, in the belief that the government was still wary of censoring religious speech.

The churches rapidly broadened their criticisms to include not only queuing but also the detention of political opponents and the obstacles to debate created by a one-party political system. Indeed, a limited and tenuous call for multi-party democracy issued earlier and more clearly from the churches and the legal profession than from any other groups, although Muge himself never made an explicit demand for legalization of opposition parties. Reverend Timothy Njoya of the PCEA was arrested briefly in 1988 for a sermon that proposed the holding of a large kamukunji, or council, with amnesty for the country's dissidents, to give all a chance to talk. Bishop Henry Okullu offered the first unequivocal endorsement of a multi-party system in early May 1990, giving a push to Rubia and Matiba. Bishop Okullu had long criticized the KANU leadership and had once referred to some of the leaders as "court poets."^[56]

Church activity increased sharply in 1989–90. A New Year's sermon by Reverend Timothy Njoya drew the first public parallels between events in Eastern Europe and the political situation on the African continent, for which he attracted Minister Elijah Mwangale's ire and demands that he be detained without trial. Eighteen Catholic bishops subsequently signed a pastoral letter urging political liberalization and Archbishop Manasses Kuria of the CPK issued a statement calling for overhaul of the electoral system, attacking corruption and forced harambee contributions, and drawing attention to the plight of the poor. Okullu urged a two-term limit on the tenure of any individual in the presidency. Despite virulent government attacks against the churches and KANU claims that Mwakenya had friends among the clerics, the government did not move decisively to stop the activity. (It should be noted, however, that the man who started it all, Bishop Alexander Muge, died in a car crash in Eldoret in mid 1990.)

The Informal Sector, the Ouko Affair, and Political Action in the Shantytowns

The other potential domestic source of pressure on the government was action by the members of Kenya's burgeoning informal sector, or jua kali (hot sun) enterprises. It would be incorrect to say that the thousands of hawkers, traders, metalworkers, carpenters, and open-air me-

chanics in this sector, rural and urban, had a single set of economic interests or political objectives. In fact, their interests were extremely varied, as were their relationships with the government and members of the country's business and political elite.^[57] If Daniel arap Moi had a strong political base among the members of any single part of the society, however, he had support from some of these small producers and traders, to whom he projected the image of a "populist" opposed to a Kikuyu-dominated business elite.

It is also the case that Moi, like other African leaders, feared the power of this sector. Not only were the traders the "glue" in the Kenyan economy, providing cheap goods and services to a populace less and less able to afford the basic requirements of life, and therefore economically powerful, but they also had political power, which resided in their ability to get out on the streets in numbers and in a form that challenged the capacity of any government to maintain order.

According to some students of the sector, most members remained firmly in the Moi camp.^[58] In 1990, two actions of the Moi government began to change the attitudes of some, however. The first was the assassination of Foreign Minister Robert Ouko. A distinguished Luo politician of long standing, Ouko had appeared to be a staunch Moi supporter. He was responsible for negotiating aid arrangements with countries that were bringing increasing pressure on Kenya for political reform—most particularly the United States. Ouko had traveled to America frequently, where senior officials met with him to discuss the linkage between assistance levels and human rights. When Moi announced that he would travel to the United States to meet with the U.S. president, without an invitation from U.S. policy makers, the U.S. ambassador discouraged him from doing so. He traveled to Washington regardless and received no welcome. Among many Kenyans, including some of Moi's supporters, the story goes that upon his return Moi was so furious with Ouko that he ordered his assassination.^[59] Whether true or not, the rumor provoked substantial grass-roots outrage, especially in the Luo community, which rioted for several days, cutting Nyanza District off from the rest of the country. Protestors recorded songs about the event, which they circulated to people in other parts of the country on cassettes, traded by members of the informal sector. Among these was "Who Killed Ouko," a song by Sam Muraya. Increasingly, there were reports of two-fingered "salutes" to multi-partyism by hawkers.

In June, after parliamentary discussion of Ouko's death ended, the government took the second action that provoked opposition in the sec-

tor. Perhaps fearful of the spread of the subversive cassettes and acting on rumors that anti-Moi forces, allegedly trained in Uganda, were posing as hawkers, the government moved to disrupt the activities of the thousands of entrepreneurs who had operated in the country's legal "gray area." Although it publicly claimed it was only getting rid of some illegal shanties and kiosks on a nearby road, government bulldozers moved in and razed the shanty village of Muoroto, in Nairobi, killing two people, injuring others, and leaving many without places to live. These actions on the part of the Nairobi City Council, acting in concert with KANU, had the effect of opening up real estate for distribution to loyal adherents of the nyayo philosophy. Kenyatta had occasionally bulldozed shanties for that purpose, and the same motive may well originally have been behind the razing of Muoroto, but it came to have a more explicit political rationale under the circumstances that prevailed. When the MP for the area, Maina Wanjigi, expressed outrage and sought restitution, his colleagues in Parliament denounced his actions as divisive and "tribalist." He eventually lost his seat and his position in KANU.^[60]

It is likely that these two events influenced the size and style of the riots on July 7, 1990, after the government detained Matiba and Rubia. Reporters observed participants using the characteristic "two-fingered salute" and chanting anti-government slogans. Although the members of the informal sector could not provide an organized forum for discussion, at least some of their number began to lend economic and social weight to the demands for greater openness. For example, foreign observers noted that market women—fruit and vegetable hawkers—lined up in their new locations, pointed to themselves, and chanted, "Human rights!" The government moved against the informal sector a second time in November 1990, razing Kibagare, another shantytown in Nairobi, and leaving 30,000 homeless. KANU members escorted the bulldozers and moved people away from the site. Again, the rumor spread that the government's intention was to stop the circulation of the subversive cassettes, which had rapidly multiplied in number and included a new gospel song entitled "The Poor People of Muoroto." The government stated that the dissident and former detainee Koigi wa Wamwere had incited the residents of the shantytown to oppose KANU and that it would not tolerate such behavior.^[61]

It is important to note that the jua kali has itself often been the source of KANU youth-wing members. In recent years, the party has paid its activists, and just as KANU provided income and opportunity to some

politicians, it has also provided such for those less well-off. The absence of a single set of economic interests means the sector has brought, and can bring, only limited power to bear to defend political space.

Testing the Limits

Because of the bargaining structures they create, single-party systems facilitate encroachment on political space and undermine both policy debate and the accountability of state institutions to society. The presence of interest groups angered by government policy stances and able to command control of critical economic sectors may slow these trends and even secure changes in the party system. In most instances, that requires civic associations or interest-group lobbies whose members can continue to provide for their households despite government persecution. That is, members must not be wholly dependent for their economic survival on government-controlled employment. It also requires that members of these groups be able to organize bases for sustained opposition, relationships with one another and with others that permit civic associations to elicit concerted action as long as necessary to force government officials to bargain and to retreat from stances they had earlier assumed. Because single-party systems also shape the character of civil society, favoring cultivation of patron-client ties and communal associations over interest-group organizations, the citizens of most countries of sub-Saharan Africa are likely to find it difficult to halt authoritarianism and to create stable competitive political systems. Although better situated than many nations to broach such a change because of the relatively greater latitude allowed private entrepreneurial activity, Kenya, too, falls into this category.

During the period 1987–90, the combined actions of Matiba, Rubia and other businessmen, members of the legal community, and elements of the church led to the reversal, on paper, of some of the restrictions on civil liberties the Moi government had imposed. The Ministry of National Guidance and Political Affairs endured for only a short time before its dissolution, which was prompted less by the pressure for political reform than by the jurisdictional conflicts it had sown within the government. Many of its functions were assumed by the Ministry of Culture. KANU rescinded its power to expel members and abolished the infamous national disciplinary committee created in 1986. The Kenya Law Society persisted and successfully foiled the threat to subordinate its activities to the party. Weeks after the arrest of Matiba and

Rubia and the flight of lawyers central to the call for multi-party politics, Paul Muite, the earlier opposition candidate for the position of head of the Law Society, was invited to come out of hiding, and threats to detain him apparently diminished.

Many of these changes were more cosmetic than real, however. Although the government eventually released Rubia from detention, Matiba long remained incarcerated without trial, as did others, including Gitobu Imanyara, the editor of the Nairobi Law Monthly and a key legal activist. To a great extent, the suspension rules that replaced the expulsion rules in KANU represented a change in name only, as they carried with them the threat of ineligibility to contest all future general elections. Finally, the party leadership continued to carry out many of the functions it had allocated to the disciplinary committee long after it had dismantled the committee itself under pressure.

In late 1991, the Moi government announced the arrest of the former energy minister Nicholas Biwott and others associated with extensive high-level corruption and implicated in a Scotland Yard–led investigation of the murder of Robert Ouko. Questioning by a Scotland Yard official, Malcolm Troon, had revealed that just prior to his murder Ouko had challenged Biwott over the latter's alleged appropriation of foreign aid for his own use. Over the succeeding months, foreign donors, friends of Ouko, and high-level officials put information together that implicated Biwott and a number of the president's associates in the diversion of aid money (including the entire Swedish assistance package of the previous year), manipulation of policy to pursue personal business interests, and failure to repay millions of dollars in loans from Citibank, whose officials were told their lives were in danger unless they accepted the defaults. When foreign donors met in Paris on November 25, 1991, the representatives agreed to suspend the major part of all loans and grants to the government of Kenya pending review of efforts to curb corruption and more tolerance of political pluralism.

On December 3, 1991, the president announced that Kenya would take the further step of legalizing opposition political parties. Specifically, he noted that parties would be permitted to register with the government and that those who did so could contest future elections. The rules returned substantially to the form they had taken in the mid 1960s, when the Kenyatta government had manipulated registration to limit expansion of the Kenya People's Union. The Forum for the Restoration of Democracy (FORD) became an opposition umbrella, first for two parties, one behind Martin Shikuku and the other behind the law-

yer Paul Muite. Advisers at home and abroad counseled cooperation within FORD, and the two factions rejuvenated their coalition in a tenuous truce. Subsequently the number of internal divisions proliferated, and several ethnic political machines asserted themselves. These included the "House of Mumbi," under the nominal direction of Kenneth Matiba (then very ill), and a Luo counter-group. KANU itself underwent little change in the first weeks following Moi's announcement, provoking the resignation of several cabinet ministers, including Mwai Kibaki, who had hoped to see a greater degree of openness within the ranks. Kibaki constituted an opposition party, the Democratic Party, outside the auspices of FORD.